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Sunday, February 26, 2017

As you may have known many Christian Egyptian families fled Al-Arish city after a terrorist killing spree targeting them in the city.
The families fled North Sinai's Al-Arish city leaving their homes, work and schools as in the past 4 weeks seven Christians were killed and slaughtered brutally in the biggest city in North Sinai by "militants.
Usually, the main suspect we have in North Sinai when it comes to militants is Anser Beit Al-Maqdis or what is commonly known as the "Sinai Province of Daesh".
The displaced families fled to Ismailia governorate, the nearest and most favorite place for Sinai locals to stay in away from the ongoing war on terrorism. They took a shelter at the Evangelical church in Ismailia at first.

This old man told journalists that he did not leave his house
during the Israeli occupation "Roger Anis"

On Friday, the government began to act and the governor of Ismailia began to host some of the displaced families in Ismailia Youth hostel as well empty apartments. The Orthodox Church opened its doors and helped in hosting the families in apartments.
Donations are collected in bank accounts opened by the Orthodox Church to help the families who are mostly from the working class and low middle class.
Activists and journalists say we are dealing with more than 80 families and the number is increasing. The Orthodox Church said officially that there were 100 families from Al-Arish
The parliamentary affairs minister told the parliament that the government rehoused 118 families on Sunday.

The first Druze-Israeli minister in the Israeli cabinet history said that Trump and Netanyahu should adopt El-Sisi's Plan to have a "Palestinian State in Sinai and Gaza instead of Judea and Samaria {West Bank} and that clears the way for peace with the Sunni coalition".

I know that it would be a matter of time after that the tweet that Egypt official deny that El-Sisi

The suggested so-called Palestinian state in Gaza and
part of Sinai from some Israeli website

proposed such plan but instead two days later we find the MOFA spokesperson saying that Sinai is an Egyptian territory and that no foreign official spoke with his Egyptian counterparts about Sinai as substitute land for the West Bank.

First, it is untrue that no foreign official spoke with his or her Egyptian counterparts even historically.

In 1953 during the Eisenhower's administration, US ambassador Eric Johnston was sent to Egypt and to Jordan to discuss the resettlement of Palestinian refugees in Jordan valley and in Sinai and it seems the plan failed as the Arab League rejected it along with the Palestinians.

Since then this easy alternative to solve the Palestinian refugees has been on the table for foreign diplomats as well Israelis who did not give up bringing it up in the 1960s and 1970s

So it is untrue that resettling Palestinians was not discussed between Egyptian and foreign officials.

Second, I wished that the denial of such outrageous claim would come from the Egyptian presidency and not from the Egyptian foreign ministry because in the end El-Sisi is involved and it is not the first time.

In January, MP El-Sadat questioned the parliament speaker on why the parliament spent LE 18 million from the House of Representatives' budget to buy three cars for three members including Abdel Aal himself.
El-Sadat revealed that those three cars were not included in the original HOR's annual budget for the year 2015/2016 but they were added later as a 'loan' from the National investment bank.
The outspoken MP stated that the three cars were bought in February 2016 slamming the decision to purchase those cars when the Parliament owns too many cars in a time of an economic crisis.
It turned out that the parliament purchased one of the most expensive armored cars for its speaker.

This was the last straw when it comes to the confrontation between the two men in January.
Some say that El-Sadat intended to expose this matter publicly knowing that he may get expelled eventually.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Many parts of the world saw an ice/cold/snow Moon on Friday. I missed taking a photo of that cold/snow/ice moon on Friday due to technical reasons but I did not miss taking a photo of another full bright moon on Saturday in Egypt.

I do not know if it is still considered cold moon or not but it was really cold when I took the photo and actually hours later we had thunder and rains reportedly in Cairo and Northern Delta !!

It is interesting that center added in its statement that the Government's lawyer did not present a single paper to court against their appeal.

The EU commented on the closure of El-Nadeem Center later Thursday stating that "It is a development of particular concern".
I do not expect the US Department of State or White House to comment as they used to do before for an obvious well-known reason.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

This is the second post in a series I dedicate to Egypt's internet trolls mainly from Pro-regime trolls and their fake news machine.
This post is short compared to the first post in the series
In the past few weeks, there was a huge campaign against former vice-president Mohamed ElBaradei whether in the Pro-regime mainstream media or the social media.

It started days before the end of 2016 when London-based Al-Araby TV channel announced that it was going to air a 5-part interview with ElBaradei starting 7 January on a weekly basis.
This is his first TV interview ever since the resignation from his position as the Vice-president of Egypt in August 2013 over the forcible Pro-Morsi sits-in dispersal.

The interview is covering his life and his views starting from the 1960s until our current time.
As soon as the channel released the promo of the TV interview and the Pro-regime supporters as well mainstream media went mad.
It was madness especially it was only a promo but the Nobel peace prize winner said in it that the "a fortress commander" aka a military commander could be great as a military but would fail as education minister.

Since then and days before the interview, one would see on daily and weekly basis anti-ElBaradei hashtags reaching to Egypt's top trends sometimes.

At first, I did not pay attention but then I used to get engage especially when you see a stupid hashtag like "ElBaradei destroyed Iraq !!" and it was the start.

Hamada claims to have the ability to launch top trending hashtags every day.
He launched "#ElBaradei_destroyed_Iraq" spreading the Pro-regime lie that the former head of the IAEA was the reason behind the invasion of Iraq which is untrue historically.
A tweep made me pay attention to those retweeting the tweet and how many of them were fake accounts.
Out of 106 retweets, you can see that there are fake accounts sharing the same bios with similar twitter handles if not the same retweeted that tweet spreading false information.
Those fake accounts were the start of an online trail to me specifically "abdo" aka "@3pr7man" and twin brothers as well the "V4Vendetta" twitter accounts sharing the same bio and the same second half of their handle "x1e".

The retweets and who made them

It is like they are generated by the same bot.
I traced "3pr7man" accounts and it turned out that they go back to 18-years old high school student called Abdel Rahman who just like 'Hamada" above is known allegedly for making top trends. He is also the founder of some hashtag called "#Cabinet_Team" where teenagers follow each other and increase their fellowship on twitter.

Many people asked a very good question on why those countries specifically were chosen out of 50 Muslim-majority countries especially in the executive order Trump mentions 9/11 attacks.
The 9/11 attacks hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. None of those countries are on the ban list.

That answer was not convincing for some who raised very serious accusation that Trump got business interest in three countries of the 9/11 attackers origin countries: Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt.
It turns out that Trump got companies in Egypt "2", Saudi Arabia "4" and UAE "at least 2".
Yes, the business tycoon president is said to own two companies in Egypt and this was a surprise for me !!

I have not known before that the American business tycoon has business in Egypt or even has visited it publicly before.